LLMs produce statistically plausible text given a particular context.

«Agents» run that in a loop, «given everything we’ve said so far and this new text, what is the most plausible next piece of text?»

There is nothing there.
It’s all in people’s heads.

This week I finally made the switch from getting my groceries at a big chain store to our local co-op. The co-op offers drive-up service so I can still do my shopping without triggering my social anxiety. But more importantly, they vet every product sold for sourcing and buy local and organic. So I can feel better about buying things like coffee and chocolate.

❌️️️ No on 44. DSA and WFP have conflicting opinions here. The sentiment I've seen from healthcare workers is that this will actually hurt clinics and make it harder to provider essential non-medical services like translation, transportation, etc.

❌️️️ No on 45. DSA and WFP agree here. This weakens environmental protections, which we will need whether Becerra or Hilton become governor.

✅️️ Yes on 1. Issues bonds for Low Income Housing

❌️️ No on 37. We have a housing shortage. I don't like making it easier to buy multiple homes.

❌️️ No on 38. I usually vote yes for bond measures, but this is being called a billionaire handout in disguise.

✅️️ Yes on M. Adds a small parcel tax for special education and exempts senior citizens and disabled folks.

✅️️ Yes on H. Issues bonds for repairs for community colleges

We also have some propositions to improve elections. DSA and WFP also agree on these

✅️ Yes on 4. Changes the rules for campaign financing to allow public financing. This will reduce the influence of coroporate money in our elections and allow progressive candidates a chance.

✅️ Yes on 5. Makes recalls less appealing. In California it's too easy to trigger a recall and it's consistently used by right wingers to try to remove Democrats.

❌️ No on 39. This is Voter ID

This time we have a number of "Tax the Rich" propositions! DSA and WFP agree on all these

✅ Yes on 2. Makes it so we can capture more capital gains, increases the "Rainy Day Fund", and makes it harder for "excess taxes" on the rich to be refunded.

✅ Yes on 3. This amends the state constitution to solidify an existing tax that funds schools

✅ Yes on 40. This is the billionaire tax! Fuck those guys!

❌ No on 41–43. These are designed to counteract the billionaire tax.

Jame Kim for insurance Commissioner because both DSA and WFP endorse her.

Xavier Becerra for Governor because Hilton is out of his fucking mind. This is not a happy vote.

There's a bunch of other candidate races I don't have strong opinions about. In these cases I usually go with Democratic Socialists or Working families part endorsements where available. In races between a Democrat and Republican, I vote for the Democrat.

Gregg Fishman for SMUD board. SMUD is our municipal energy utility. Incumbent Fishman wants to continue our transition to zero carbon without raising costs for customers. Challenger Slotterback is running because he strongly believes wind turbines kill birds. So this one easily goes to Fishman.

I have no recommendation for Assembly. Maggy Krell is another corporate Dem, but it doesn't seem like Jagtar Sigh is running a serious campaign. Maggy handedly won her primary, so she will win regardless

The candidates I personally care about most in this race are our Sacramento locals:

Mai Vang for House. Endorsed by both DSA and Working Families party. Dorris Matsui is a fossil and needs to go, so I'm glad she's being challenged. Mai has a heavy focus on getting corporate influence out of our politics.

Dr. Flo Cofer for Board of Supervisors. Endorsed by Working Families Party. I voted for Dr. Flo when she ran for mayor. Although she was unsuccessful, I'm happy she's taking another shot.

It's time to vote California! As per usual, sharing my votes with BlueVoterGuide and I'll provide my reasoning below 👇

https://bluevoterguide.org/view-ballot?bid20=2003b2608d7dff84c4fb7a89796387327c

There’s an endless parade of horrors in America right now. If I commented on them all I’d never rest.

But a live streamed execution is so deeply horrible, terrifying and evil.

I hope everyone responsible for this regime suffers.

Some of y’all grew up as evangelicals and never deconstructed that and it shows

I sent this actual text to @annaecook:

“Yeah I want to love it so much. She’s beauty she’s grace. But she also might be a wine mom idk”

Design is so funny because you literally will look at letters and ask questions like, “but do they eat box?”

Did we forget about this or? https://apnews.com/article/california-marines-live-fire-highway-6fde99346aeffc34cc12412709391269

Back in the 1980s Mr. Griffiths taught Computer Science in my local school. Two maxims he repeated almost every week have stuck with me for decades.

"A computer is exactly as smart as the person telling it what to do"

and

"A computer can and will make mistakes, and it'll do it a million times faster than you can"

--

There are no rogue LLM agents.

Only negligent people telling computers what to do.

And letting them make mistakes a million times faster than ever before.

If I don't keep my car roadworthy and crash into yours, it hasn't gone "rogue", it's my negligence and I'm responsible. If my dog attacks you, I am liable. There are no rogue AIs, just negligent AI companies. Prosecute them.

Remember: having more filed issues than you can fix in a lifetime is more important than having an inhabitable planet. /s

@janl @danirabbit We're getting a steady stream of LLM-generated or assisted article pitches and now a bunch of pitches for "projects" created using LLMs. I doubt we're seeing as much nonsense as y'all are, but it is so draining.

No. We don't want to publish something written by or assisted by your stochastic parrot.

No. We're not going to write about a software project that you threw together with LLMs and will probably grow bored with when the novelty wears off and/or you run out of money for tokens.

If there's one message LLM users need to hear very loudly, I think, it's this:

"No, you didn't create this. You summoned it. Nobody asked you to, but you did it anyway. You aren't getting a cookie for it. Nobody will be proud of you for doing it. Go away."

Reminder: we do not accept pull requests written with LLMs! We will close these pull requests without review.

https://docs.elementary.io/contributor-guide/development/generative-ai-policy

Please be respectful of our team’s limited time and resources. We’d much rather be working on bug fixes and cool new features than sorting out if you actually wrote the code you’re submitting